Cancers are tissue-specific, truly important perspective
/Tissue-specificity in cancer: The rule, not the exception
Kevin M. Haigis, Karen Cichowski, and Stephen J. Elledge
Science (article)
“Abstract—We are in the midst of a renaissance in cancer genetics. Over the past several decades, candidate-based targeted sequencing efforts provided a steady stream of information on the genetic drivers for certain cancer types. However, with recent technological advances in DNA sequencing, this stream has become a torrent of unbiased genetic information revealing the frequencies and patterns of point mutations and copy number variations (CNVs) across the entire spectrum of cancers. One of the most important observations from this work is that genetic alterations in bona fide cancer drivers (those genes that, when mutated, promote tumorigenesis) show a remarkable spectrum of tissue specificity”
